Beneath Ceaseless Skies #207

by Marie Brennan

  Alarch seized her hands. The faerie’s grip was strong, a reminder of her powerful wings. However elegant her exterior, it hid something much tougher beneath.

  “Listen to me,” Alarch said, the intensity of her voice dragging Ada’s attention from the river. “Do not let impossibility deter you. I have lived a thousand years and more, and seen mortals do things beyond the dreams of their ancestors. You build cities like great forests and people them with strange devices. You burn coal and boil water and somehow it drags unimaginable weight along a track. I do not understand how such an engine works, but I understand this: if humans can create such a thing, there is nothing they cannot do. It only wants the vision and tenacity to see it done. Your mother is nothing if not tenacious, but she would grind the vision from you if she could. Do not let her.”

  The words made Ada’s throat close up. Vision was not a thing she was supposed to have. That was a word for poets and madmen. But it burned within her regardless: the belief that her lessons were not—should not be—merely a discipline for her mind, a way to train her thinking to the bounds of rationality, but rather the means by which she might translate vision into reality. The wings on which her spirit would soar, even if her body could not.

  Dizzy, she swayed where she sat.

  Alarch’s determination transformed to alarm. “Your hands—they are burning hot.” She released one to lay her fingers against Ada’s brow. “You are feverish. We should not have been out here in this cold wind. Come, we must get you home.” She rose, drawing Ada with her.

  Partway with her. The world spun, and Ada fell.

  * * *

  Mortlake, Surrey: 24 March, 1829

  This time there were no dreams of her father.

  There was only fever and sweating, itching and a cough that would not go away and would not let her sleep. She heard enough to understand that she had the measles, but everything past that was beyond her. Eating required too much effort. She swallowed broth only because her mother ordered her to, and obedience was a habit not easily broken. Besides, if she took the broth, then she would be left in peace, to fly on the wings of delirium.

  In her fevered dreams she soared above the earth, seeing England wheel beneath her. There was no steam engine, no harness, not even any feathers. Human flesh and bone was enough. It had to be a charm, and she chided Alarch for placing it on her; had Ada not insisted she would fly on her own?

  She saw the swan-maiden’s face, white with worry. Always her friend had appeared in near-human guise, only small touches like the snowy sheen of her hair betraying her faerie nature, but what Ada saw now could never have been mistaken for mortal. The tolling of a nearby church bell made Alarch shudder, her hands clenching on Ada’s shoulders.

  “I cannot stay,” Alarch said, the words echoing as if they came from a great distance away. “With no more bread—Ada, forgive me. I must return to Kent.”

  Kent. The fields and woods of Patrixbourne spun below her. She had tried so hard to fly above them, and now, at last, she succeeded.

  “I will find you again,” Alarch vowed. “Or you must come find me. Promise me, Ada. Do not let them make you forget us. Do not forget there is more to the world than your mother sees.”

  Someone began to hammer coffin nails. No, it was only footsteps in the corridor, and Ada was in her bed. Anguished, Alarch released her, and with a rustling of feathers she vanished.

  * * *

  Here, then, our almost unfledg’d wings we try;

  Clip not our pinions, ere the birds can fly:

  Failing in this our first attempt to soar,

  Drooping, alas! we fall to rise no more.

  — “An Occasional Prologue”

  Lord Byron

  Chelsea, London: 5 June, 1833

  The Somervilles’ house was not nearly so elegant as others Ada had visited of late, being a dreary government residence, provided to them as part of Dr. Somerville’s appointment to Chelsea Hospital. Laid against the glittering beauty of Court, at which Ada had been presented not a month past, it seemed a positive dungeon.

  Appearances were misleading. Ada would not have traded this cramped little place for Clarence House itself. The company here was far more congenial.

  Mary Somerville greeted her with a broad smile and a brief embrace. “I am so glad you could join us,” she said, tucking her hand inside Ada’s arm. “You are looking splendidly well.”

  “I feel as if I have my strength back at last,” Ada said. “I hardly recognized myself when I climbed from my sickbed—and indeed, I hardly recognize myself now, for I am not the same person I was when I fell ill.” More than two years on bed rest would change anyone, but those years had also carried her over the threshold into womanhood.

  No, nothing so definite as womanhood. She had felt like a soft mass of dough, that needed shaping into some kind of form. Riding had strengthened her wind and shed some of the weight brought on by enforced idleness, while preparations for her presentation at Court last month had polished an exterior long since grown dull. Mr. Turner...

  Best not to think of that indiscretion. Her tutor was gone; she must accept the loss. Pursuing him had been the height of irrationality to begin with, and she should have known better.

  “You are recovered now,” Mary said, squeezing her arm, “and your mother tells me your studies go very well.”

  “They resume, at least, which is a positive victory after these last few years. I found it dreadfully hard to concentrate,” Ada admitted. “The smallest things would overwhelm me. But I have begun to refresh my memory on geometry and algebra, and as soon as my grip on those is secure once more, I will continue onward.”

  By now the maid had taken Ada’s bonnet and mantle, and so Mary drew her toward the parlour. “I know you had an interest in astronomy, before you fell ill. Is that still the case?”

  She might as well have asked what transpired before the Flood. Thinking back that far was like reaching through a fog, like trying to grasp smoke. “It is a good use for mathematics,” Ada said vaguely as they entered the parlour. “Mama told me you translated Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste while I was ill. I have not yet had the time to read it.”

  Mary clicked her tongue. “No, of course not, poor child. But one of our guests tonight helped Mr. Herschel found the Astronomical Society, and won its Gold Medal—oh, eight years ago, now? No, nine. Come, let me introduce you.”

  She led Ada across the room to where three men stood in conversation. Or rather, one was expounding at length, and the other two were listening. “All you need is addition and subtraction,” he insisted. “Simple processes, not complex ones. Finite differences, don’t you see? Say you have a polynomial function—”

  One of the gentlemen looked as if he wished to interject a question but was too polite to interrupt. Mary Somerville was not so hesitant. “Mr. Babbage,” she said, “I will stop you there, so that this young lady may listen in without eavesdropping. May I present to you the Honourable Miss Ada Byron? Ada, these gentlemen are Mr. Henry Chapman, Mr. William Raine, and Mr. Charles Babbage.”

  The gentlemen bowed, and Mr. Babbage kissed her hand with a distracted air. “Eavesdropping? Are you another mathematical sort, then, like Mrs. Somerville here?”

  Ordinarily when people heard Ada’s name, their minds went directly to her notorious father. She was at once pleased and obscurely disappointed that the connection did not seem to occur to Mr. Babbage. “I am a mere student of mathematics,” she said. “But what little knowledge I have is great enough to make me curious. What is it you were saying about finite differences?”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her, as if surprised by her interest. “I was explaining the operation of my Difference Engine, which can calculate mathematical tables by that method.”

  “For astronomy?” Ada asked, thinking of Mary’s words.

  Babbage gestured expansively, nearly striking the man to his right. “For any purpose in which mathematics might be of use. And what cannot be helped
along with numbers?”

  It called up a nameless ache, which Ada concealed as Mary presented her to the other two gentlemen. She did not want to worry anyone. There was no reason to fear a relapse of her illness; she was fully recovered. No more fevers, no more visions of things that were not there. Her mad passion for her tutor had been a child’s foolishness, now put aside, along with the fancies of her childhood. She was her mother’s daughter, not her father’s.

  But for some reason, that thought made the ache worse.

  Babbage was only too happy to answer her questions about the Difference Engine; indeed, his delight grew with each one she asked. When pressed, he admitted it might have utility for astronomy, military endeavours, even music. All the world, reduced to numbers.

  No, not reduced, Ada thought—it struck her so forcefully, she almost said it out loud. Revealed.

  His words threw open a window in her mind, admitting a gust of wind that blew away the stale and stuffy air of her long illness. She hesitated upon the threshold of a neglected room, unsure whether to enter or back away, feeling as if to go in would bring her back to that dreadful time—to delirium and madness, losing touch with the world she had struggled so hard to regain.

  But every word coming from Mr. Babbage’s mouth seemed to jostle her, threatening to tip her over that threshold. He might love numbers for their own sake, but Ada found herself thinking that mathematics was a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Her mother used the subject to bridle Ada’s rebellious mind... but did not a bridle allow one to ride a horse? And then the rider could travel anywhere she wished to go.

  Against her better judgment, Ada found herself saying, “I once thought to use numbers to find a way to fly.”

  “And why not?” Babbage said, unperturbed by the interruption. “Well, I can think of several reasons why not. It didn’t turn out very well for Icarus, if the Greeks are to be believed. But that’s the general idea, yes. The Difference Engine is only a start—though one I’m rather proud of. I already have several ideas for improvements. More complex engines, for more complex purposes. If someone comes up with the equation for flight, my machines will be able to calculate the answer.”

  She laughed, cheeks heating with embarrassment. “It was a girlhood dream, Mr. Babbage, and I am now a woman grown. But I should very much like to see this Engine. Perhaps if I continue my studies, I could provide some little assistance to your efforts.”

  The offer was presumptuous in the extreme, but Babbage’s wide smile told her he did not mind. “It’s rare enough for me to find anyone who understands the mathematics of the thing in the first place, Miss Byron, let alone dreams of uses for them. I have the Engine in a shed out behind my house; you’re welcome to come view it.”

  Ada found herself short of breath, as she had not been for many months. A distracted part of her mind said that she should excuse herself and sit down, but she did not move. This entire conversation, pairing dreams and equations, echoed in her memory like a long-forgotten tune. Philosophic mercury and philosophic sulphur, Ada thought, and wondered why she had thought of alchemy.

  For an instant, her vision swam. She had an impression that the spritely gentleman Mary had introduced as Mr. Raine looked very different: thin as a stick and quite tall, with eyes too blue for any human man. A silly fancy, and one that would appal her mother.

  Mr. Raine gave her a peculiar smile and said, “Mr. Babbage is prone to driving off the layman with his abstruse ‘explanations.’ But with someone like you, Miss Byron, to help translate him to the world... I imagine you could do great things together.”

  With a feeling of shaking the dust of past ages from her skirts, Ada dismissed his strange appearance. Not the sight of it—that remained—but the concern it ought to engender. What did it matter, truly? Ada was seventeen years of age, and could tell the difference between fancy and reality. Moreover, she could judge for herself how best to mix the two.

  After all, a little bit of irrationality was necessary to fly.

  She smiled at Mr. Babbage. “I would be delighted. “Let us see if Mr. Raine is correct. what this Engine of yours is capable of.”

  Copyright © 2016 Marie Brennan

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  Marie Brennan is a former anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for material. She is currently misapplying her professors’ hard work to the Victorian adventure series The Memoirs of Lady Trent; the first book of that series, A Natural History of Dragons, was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Cold-Forged Flame, the first novella in the Varekai series, will be out in September 2016. She is also the author of the Doppelanger duology of Warrior and Witch, the urban fantasies Lies and Prophecy and Chains and Memory, the Onyx Court historical fantasy series, and more than forty short stories, including eight in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. For more information, visit www.swantower.com.

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  GEORGE & FRANK TARR, BOY AVENCHERERS, IN ‘BEEYON THE SHOURS WE KNOWE!!!!’

  by Thomas M. Waldroon

  THE SCIENCE OF NAUSCOPIA. In March, 1785, in Paris, a man, by name Bottineau, announced that he had found out means of perceiving the approach of ships at distances extending as far as two hundred and fifty leagues; of distinguishing if there are several vessels or only one, for instance, five or six, or if they form a fleet; of showing the distance between ships invisible to the eye, their rate of speed, their stations; and many other circumstances interesting for war or commerce.

  —Once A Week, vol. IV (1869), no. 92

  We up an go raftin.

  So they’d spent all winter felling logs and dragging them to French Creek—when they could borrow a mule—a big old hoard of ash and oak and cherry on the frozen shore, the good stuff, not just ordinary white pine but fine hardwood that fetches a premium at Pittsburgh. Frank had been spending a lot of time down at Little Hope, talking to the old raftsmen who loiter around the big stove in the middle of Raymond’s General Store—should they debark the logs? Square them up? How do you bend the bows round a lash-pole? What wood’s best to use for lash-poles? How about for pins? Who could they borrow a sheet-iron stove from? How do you make a sweep? Build the shanty so you can strike it quick when you come to a low bridge? For George, it was a boy’s best daydream, just like in some hair-raising true adventure tale, only maybe real.

  Now the creek was in spate from the winter melt. The first sign is when the water curls round the downstream side of rocks and makes bubbles that bob up like frogs. Soon the creek’d be on the rise and of course the sun’d be shining like a brass band and icicles a-drip from every eave and birds piping and hopping about, all eager, and the ruts and crusts of boot-crushed, soot-blacked snow giving way to mud, mud, mud everywhere, black and brown and greenish (stinking to high heaven) and gray and yellow. And for sure (at last!) it’d be time to go.

  It was really only half a raft—what’s called a pup—but it was theirs, they’d built it themselves. It floated real low in the water, due to all the hardwood, three or four logs of it to every one of poplar or pine. Twigs and clumps and even a few drowned varmints bumped against it and whirled away across the widening creek towards the clay bluff below the graveyard and ran out of sight southwards and westwards.

  Go tell Mama, Frank said.

  No, you go, George said.

  You go!

  No, you!

  Frank stood on the raft, arms crossed, feet planted firm, and gave George that big-brother look of his. Like he was disappointed, but George might still do right, if only—

  Very well, Frank said, and made his way up the muddy bank. I’ll go this time. You watch the raft. Don’t let no one steal it now.

  I won’t! George shouted back.

  He plumped down on a stump and sat there, kicking at a rock. But he waited and waited, and Frank didn’t come back. What could be keeping him? He was up to something.

  George stood tip-toe on the stump. No one in
sight. He set off home.

  The Tarr farmhouse stands at the end of a lane off the Freeport Road, a big, white, Greek-temple-looking place in the middle of a grassy lot, an old elm tree outspreading in front like a revival preacher making a big show sending his prayers up God-wards, three white chickens and a brown one stalking and pecking, and four dark pines like sentries at the north end. Soon as he got there, George saw Frank run from the front porch to the barn.

  Frank! George shouted.

  Frank ducked behind the woodpile, clutching a gunnysack to his chest.

  A door slammed, then Mama’s voice:

  George! Is that you? Boy! Where’ve you got to?

  George walked towards the house.

  Here I am, Mama.

  She came round the corner of the porch.

  Where’s your brother? He aint done his chores. You neither. Where’ve you two been off to?

  Frank was shaking his head frantically and holding a finger against his lips.

  Don’t know.

  She put her hands on her hips.

  Been down to the creek. Aint seen him.

  Feed the chickens, she told him.

  She went back to the kitchen. George had to go by the woodpile to get to the feed bin.

  Where you going? Frank hissed at him.

  Mama told me to feed the chickens.

  They got plenty of big fat bugs. We got to go.

  But—

  Now!

  What you got there?

  Never you mind, let’s go.

  George looked back at the house. Frank scrambled up, and the two of them hurried down the lane.

  George! Frank!

  Mama was there on the porch again, broom in hand.

  Why aint you feeding those chickens like I said, George?

  George hung his head.

  Your papa’s out in the fields today, Frank—

  He ain’t my papa!

  —and those cows aint going to pasture theirselves.

  I’ll be happy if I never see another cow in my life, Mama.